Question

Consider the following code snippet from .NET 4.0 library:

private T[] array; 
private static T[] emptyArray; 
private int size; 
private int version; 

static Stack() 
{ 
    Stack<T>.emptyArray = new T[0]; 
} 

public Stack() 
{ 
    array = Stack<T>.emptyArray; 
    size = 0; 
    version = 0; 
}

Is there any reason behind initializing value type private fields to default values (size and version in the example above) explicitely other than coding standards of the company?

Answer 1

No, there is not, at least not a technical reason. Perhaps in some cases one might do that to make a point, for example if you have a counter variable of some sort and you want to make clear it starts from zero. But I think even this is a bit questionable.